d on the central baldness of his occiput, ere the traveller
seemed to be aware that such a man existed as the landlord of the Crown,
or that that landlord was standing at the chaise-door. At length a
female, closely veiled, and buried in shawls like a sultana, tremblingly
took the proffered arm, and tottered into the hotel. Shortly after,
mine host returned, attended by porter, waiter, and stable-boy--and
giving, by the lady's orders, a handsome gratuity to each of the
post-boys, asked for the traveller's luggage. There was none! At this
announcement, the landlord, as he afterwards expressed himself was
"struck all of a heap," though what he meant by it was never clearly
comprehended, as any alteration in his curiously squat figure must have
been an improvement. While he remained in perplexity and in the rain,
the latter of which might easily have been avoided, another message
arrived from the lady, ordering fresh horses to be procured, and those,
with the chaise, to be kept in readiness to start at a moment's warning.
More mystery and more perplexity! In fact, if these combined causes
had been allowed to remain much longer in operation, the worthy
landlord, instead of carrying on his business profitably, would have
been carried off peremptorily, by a catarrh, his wife's nursing, and a
doctor; but, fortunately, it struck one of the post-boys that rain was
not necessary to a conversation, and sleet but a bad solvent of a
mystery; so the posse adjourned into the tap, in order that the subject
might be discussed more at the ease of the gentlemen who fancied
themselves concerned in it.

"And you have not seen her face?" said mine host of the Crown.

"Shouldn't know her from Adam's grandmother," said the post-boy who had
ridden the wheel-horses. "Howsomedever, I yeerd her sob and moan like a
wheel as vants grease."

"You may say that," said the other post-boy, a little shrivelled old
man, a good deal past sixty; "we lads see strange soights. I couldn't
a-bear to see her siffer in that 'ere manner--I did feel for her almost
as much as if she'd been an 'oss."

The landlord gave the two charioteers _force de complimens_ for the
tenderness of their feelings, the intensity of which he fully
comprehended, as he changed for each his guinea, the bounty of the lady.
When he found them in proper cue, that is to say, in the middle of
their second glass of brandy-and-water, he proceeded in his
cross-examination, and he learn